In 1860 James and Hamilton McIlrath of Balloo, County Down, migrated to Melbourne and, after a brief stint on the goldfields there, voyaged on to New Zealand. Initially the brothers gravitated to the southern goldfields, before trying their hand at other trades. Hamilton McIlrath told readers at home in County Down that while his brother James found employment on a station, fellow migrant William James Alexander ‘has got nothing to do for his £70 per anum but milk the cows and drink the milk. I am with A whole sale wine and spirit merchant. I drive out grog and beer and sometimes I plough. I like my work first rate’ (II 5). From the beginning, however, despite their contentment with colonial work, the brothers contemplated buying land to farm. As James informed home readers, ‘We can Buy good land for 2£ an acre free forever flat and clear and we can let it on a purchesing clause’ (Il 6). The idea of land at this price would have been particularly striking to Irish readers who were usually tenants with high rents and no security of tenure.

As subsequent letters reveal, after a period accumulating some savings the McIlrath brothers indeed purchased land and set about developing their holding. Not surprisingly, initial reports focused on the novelty of encountering unfamiliar conditions and learning new skills: ‘You people at home would think it strange to begin on land where there was not a fence whatever nor one sod turned since it was land and this is land of the richest quality’ (Il 7). Traditional skills were either adapted or abandoned in the new environment, while novel techniques were frequently adopted. As Hamilton McIlrath explained in detail in 1874, ‘we do not go to the trouble of draining and manuring just ploughs and harrows and rolls and leaves it there untill fit for cuting. No weeding [erased: of] or thistle pulling here. Thrashes the grain in the paddocks and burns the straw. Makes no manure except what the horses makes. In the winter never houses cattle’ (Il 20). Equally, in describing what colonial farming did not involve, Hamilton McIlrath was implicitly comparing farming practices in New Zealand and Ireland, contrasts that would have attracted the curiosity of Irish readers.